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These several productive classes, or Interests,' which it is sometimes the fashion to oppose and contrast with each other, are far from being separated by any broad line of demarcation. They are indeed, on the contrary, closely entwined and enlaced together, forming the warp and woof in the web of society. Their interests, consequently, are identical; and any attempt to advance that of one, at the expense of the others, must be equally prejudicial to all. In fact, the business of each branch is to supply the wants of the others, so that any falling off in the means of one must cause a proportionate defalcation in the occupation and resources of the others. They are inseparably connected, and depend upon or grow out of each other. The agriculturists raise raw produce for the manufacturers and merchants, while the latter fabricate and import articles of necessity, convenience, and ornament for the use of the former. Whatever, consequently, contributes to promote or depress the industry and enterprise of one class, must have a beneficial or injurious influence upon the others. 'Land and trade,' to borrow the just and forcible expressions of Sir Josiah Child, are TWINS, and have always, and ever will, wax and wane together. It cannot be ill with trade but land will fall, nor ill with land but trade will feel it.' Hence the injurious consequences that result from every attempt to exalt and advance one species of industry by giving it factitious advantages at the expense of the rest.

It has been a question much disputed whether any one of these branches of industry should hold a higher rank in the general estimation than another.

Many writers have contended for the pre-eminence of agriculture over manufactures and commerce. M. Quesnay and the French economists were followed in this by Dr. Smith. But the reason assigned by them for this preference, namely, that in agriculture labour is most productive, as being exclusively assisted by the powers of Nature, is an evident fallacy. The manufacturer and the merchant avail themselves of the useful qualities of the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms to the same extent as the cultivator; and Nature affords her aid as bountifully and as gratuitously to the one as to the other.

Though these authors have failed in giving a satisfactory reason for the rank they would assign to agriculture above the other useful arts, it is not, however, the less true that a marked preference has been awarded in all times and countries to this branch of industry; and it is difficult to believe that so prevalent a feeling can have its origin in a miserable fallacy. A little reflection will enable us easily to account for it. The true source of the peculiar veneration in which agriculture has been always held, lies in the consciousness that it is to this art man is indebted for the staff of life, FooD; while the rest serve only to minister to his convenience and luxury, and multiply his means of enjoyment. However important to his comfort may be the greater number of objects which commerce and manufactures place at his disposal,-however justly he may prize these departments of industry for their varied and valuable gifts, every one must feel that he is yet more deeply indebted to that art which

AS THE SOURCE OF SUBSISTENCE.

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furnishes him with the main support of his existence, without which he could not survive the day. He feels that he could spare the products of the former arts, but not of the latter. Those supply him with luxuries and comforts, this with necessaries. Even if we must consider this a prejudice, it is at least a natural, and may well be a general one. But it is not a prejudice; in the present circumstances of society it has a sound and reasonable foundation. So long as there are thousands of our fellow-creatures starving for want of necessaries, the art which occupies itself in supplying them will, in the estimation of every friend to humanity, bear the palm over those which are engaged in providing superfluities! While there is FAMINE on the earth, every man of human feelings will desire to encourage the manufacture of corn in preference to that of cottons, silks, or muslins, to stimulate the production of bread, even though at the expense of toys and trinkets.

But why should there be any lack of the necessaries of life? How is it that we boast of the multiplied inventions and improvements of civilization as having armed man with an immense increase of productive power,—if it be true that they have not yet enabled him to procure a sufficiency of necessaries for the bare support of his existence? In a condition of barbarism, with nothing to depend on but his natural resources, his existence is necessarily precarious;-hunger and misery his occasional, perhaps frequent, visiters. But every step that he makes in knowledge and art, in the improvement of his faculties and the enlargement of his resources, ought to remove

him farther and farther from the reach of want. And it would be strange, indeed, if, after ages spent in successive victories over matter, and in accumulating the means of yet further conquestsafter he has not only compelled whole races of the inferior animals to his service, but taught the very elements, each and all, to do his bidding, with superior docility and far greater power,-when invention after invention, one more perfect than the other, have multiplied his powers of production in every branch of industry to a considerable, and in some to an almost incalculable extent;—it would be indeed strange if, in spite of all this, man were still unable to escape the grasp of want, --still incapable of procuring a full sufficiency even of the coarsest necessaries on which to maintain life.

If such should, indeed, be the condition of the population of any country which has made a considerable progress in the arts of production, the simplest reflection will force upon us the conviction that gross mismanagement must prevail either in the direction of its resources or the distribution of their produce.

We are thus brought to one of the most interesting questions of political economy, the question indeed of highest importance to the welfare of mankind; and on which it has unfortunately happened that the most false and ruinously pernicious opinions have been professed by nearly every late writer on the subject, the question on the relations naturally subsisting between population and food.

CHAPTER XI.

POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE.

History of the supply of Food to an increasing People.Early limitation of the numbers and resources of Man.Hunting State.-Pastoral State.-Agricultural State.Increased facilities for procuring Subsistence consequent on every Improvement.—Culture of inferior Soils indicative of increased, not of diminished Resources.-Sure Resource of Migration.—Colonization.-Vast extent of rich Soil yet uncultivated.—Unlimited capacity of the Globe for the production of Food.-Misery the result of Crime and Folly, not of any natural Law.-Food can easily be made to increase faster than Population-as also Capital of every kind.-Folly, mischief, and impiety of the Malthusian Doctrine.-True direction of prudence to the Increase of Food and Wealth, not the limitation of numbers and happiness.

We repeat, this is infinitely the most interesting problem in the whole range of the science of Political Economy. That science we defined as having for its object the study of the circumstances which determine the abundance and general distribution among the members of a society of the necessaries, comforts, and luxuries of life. But it is obvious that of such circumstances the most momentous by far must be those which determine its supply of the MEANS OF SUBSISTENCE. NO abundance of conveniences or luxuries can com

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